Monitoring and control over a third party's use of a proprietary document is a current goal of document owners. There are many systems for limiting use of and access of a third party to a proprietary document, but enforcement of any limitation of the third party's ability to print the document once the third party has a plaintext version of the document has not been as successful as desired. Current technologic solutions are ineffective once the third party has the plaintext version, so protections have relied on non-technologic solutions.
It is known to provide the proprietary document in a protected form, either encrypted or otherwise inaccessible, to the third party. Certain conditions are established before providing the third party with an ability to access an unprotected version of the proprietary document. Eventually, the third party is provided access and in the course of printing the document, a plaintext version of the proprietary document becomes available. A third party is able to circumvent technological controls regarding the document once they have access to the plaintext version.
Unfortunately, many solutions increase a management overhead associated with monitoring and enforcement of print rights, and that overhead increases with increasingly stricter compliance procedures. As the overhead increases, demand and use of the proprietary document decline.
Further, it is sometimes the case that it is more convenient or expedient to permit distributed printing of books. It is important to control the printing of books in such cases to ensure that authorized numbers of books are printed and accounted for.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for document processing rights management that combines ease of use with an ability to enforce desired usage rights. The present invention addresses such a need.